|
Iran
The Bani Sadr Presidency
Bani Sadr's program as president was to reestablish central authority,
gradually to phase out the Pasdaran and the revolutionary courts
and committees and to absorb them into other government organizations,
to reduce the influence of the clerical hierarchy, and to launch
a program for economic reform and development. Against the wishes
of the IRP, Khomeini allowed Bani Sadr to be sworn in as president
in January 1980, before the convening of the Majlis. Khomeini
further bolstered Bani Sadr's position by appointing him chairman
of the Revolutionary Council and delegating to the president his
own powers as commander in chief of the armed forces. On the eve
of the Iranian New Year, on March 20, Khomeini issued a message
to the nation designating the coming year as "the year of order
and security" and outlining a program reflecting Bani Sadr's own
priorities.
Nevertheless, the problem of multiple centers of power and of
revolutionary organizations not subject to central control persisted
to plague Bani Sadr. Like Bazargan, Bani Sadr found he was competing
for primacy with the clerics and activists of the IRP. The struggle
between the president and the IRP dominated the political life
of the country during Bani Sadr's presidency. Bani Sadr failed
to secure the dissolution of the Pasdaran and the revolutionary
courts and committees. He also failed to establish control over
the judiciary or the radio and television networks. Khomeini himself
appointed IRP members Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti as chief justice
and member Ayatollah Abdol-Karim Musavi-Ardabili as prosecutor
general (also seen as attorney general). Bani Sadr's appointees
to head the state broadcasting services and the Pasdaran were
forced to resign within weeks of their appointments.
Parliamentary elections were held in two stages in March and
May 1980, amid charges of fraud. The official results gave the
IRP and its supporters 130 of 241 seats decided (elections were
not completed in all 270 constituencies). Candidates associated
with Bani Sadr and with Bazargan's IFM each won a handful of seats;
other left-of-center secular parties fared no better. Candidates
of the radical left-wing parties, including the Mojahedin, the
Fadayan, and the Tudeh, won no seats at all. IRP dominance of
the Majlis was reinforced when the credentials of a number of
deputies representing the National Front and the Kurdish-speaking
areas, or standing as independents, were rejected. The consequences
of this distribution of voting power soon became evident. The
Majlis began its deliberations in June 1980. Hojjatoleslam Ali
Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a cleric and founding member of the
IRP, was elected Majlis speaker. After a two-month deadlock between
the president and the Majlis over the selection of the prime minister,
Bani Sadr was forced to accept the IRP candidate, Mohammad Ali
Rajai. Rajai, a former street peddler and schoolteacher, was a
Beheshti protégé. The designation of cabinet ministers was delayed
because Bani Sadr refused to confirm cabinet lists submitted by
Rajai. In September 1980, Bani Sadr finally confirmed fourteen
of a list of twenty-one ministers proposed by the prime minister.
Some key cabinet posts, including the ministries of foreign affairs,
labor, commerce, and finance, were filled only gradually over
the next six months. The differences between president and prime
minister over cabinet appointments remained unresolved until May
1981, when the Majlis passed a law allowing the prime minister
to appoint caretakers to ministries still lacking a minister.
The president's inability to control the revolutionary courts
and the persistence of revolutionary temper were demonstrated
in May 1980, when executions, which had become rare in the previous
few months, began again on a large scale. Some 900 executions
were carried out, most of them between May and September 1980,
before Bani Sadr left office in June 1981. In September the chief
justice finally restricted the authority of the courts to impose
death sentences. Meanwhile a remark by Khomeini in June 1980 that
"royalists" were still to be found in government offices led to
a resumption of widespread purges. Within days of Khomeini's remarks
some 130 unofficial purge committees were operating in government
offices. Before the wave of purges could be stopped, some 4,000
civil servants and between 2,000 and 4,000 military officers lost
their jobs. Around 8,000 military officers had been dismissed
or retired in previous purges.
The Kurdish problem also proved intractable. The rebellion continued,
and the Kurdish leadership refused to compromise on its demands
for local autonomy. Fighting broke out again in April 1980, followed
by another cease-fire on April 29. Kurdish leaders and the government
negotiated both in Mahabad and in Tehran, but, although Bani Sadr
announced he was prepared to accept the Kurdish demands with "modifications,"
the discussions broke down and fighting resumed. The United States
hostage crisis was another problem that weighed heavily on Bani
Sadr. The "students of the Imam's line" and their IRP supporters
holding the hostages were using the hostage issue and documents
found in the embassy to radicalize the public temper, to challenge
the authority of the president, and to undermine the reputations
of moderate politicians and public figures. The crisis was exacerbating
relations with the United States and West European countries.
President Carter had ordered several billion dollars of Iranian
assets held by American banks in the United States and abroad
to be frozen. Bani Sadr's various attempts to resolve the crisis
proved abortive. He arranged for the UN secretary general to appoint
a commission to investigate Iranian grievances against the United
States, with the understanding that the hostages would be turned
over to the Revolutionary Council as a preliminary step to their
final release. The plan broke down when, on February 23, 1980,
the eve of the commission's arrival in Tehran, Khomeini declared
that only the Majlis, whose election was still several months
away, could decide the fate of the hostages.
The shah had meantime made his home in Panama. Bani Sadr and
Foreign Minister Qotbzadeh attempted to arrange for the shah to
be arrested by the Panamanian authorities and extradited to Iran.
But the shah abruptly left Panama for Egypt on March 23, 1980,
before any summons could be served.
In April the United States attempted to rescue the hostages by
secretly landing aircraft and troops near Tabas, along the Dasht-e
Kavir desert in eastern Iran. Two helicopters on the mission failed,
however, and when the mission commander decided to abort the mission,
a helicopter and a C-130 transport aircraft collided, killing
eight United States servicemen.
The failed rescue attempt had negative consequences for the Iranian
military. Radical factions in the IRP and left-wing groups charged
that Iranian officers opposed to the Revolution had secretly assisted
the United States aircraft to escape radar detection. They renewed
their demand for a purge of the military command. Bani Sadr was
able to prevent such a purge, but he was forced to reshuffle the
top military command. In June 1980, the chief judge of the Army
Military Revolutionary Tribunal announced the discovery of an
antigovernment plot centered on the military base in Piranshahr
in Kordestan. Twenty-seven junior and warrant officers were arrested.
In July the authorities announced they had uncovered a plot centered
on the Shahrokhi Air Base in Hamadan. Six hundred officers and
men were implicated. Ten of the alleged plotters were killed when
members of the Pasdaran broke into their headquarters. Approximately
300 officers, including two generals, were arrested, and warrants
were issued for 300 others. The government charged the accused
with plotting to overthrow the state and seize power in the name
of exiled leader Bakhtiar. Khomeini ignored Bani Sadr's plea for
clemency and said those involved must be executed. As many as
140 officers were shot on orders of the military tribunal; wider
purges of the armed forces followed.
In September 1980, perhaps believing the hostage crisis could
serve no further diplomatic or political end, the Rajai government
indicated to Washington through a diplomat of the Federal Republic
of Germany (West Germany) that it was ready to negotiate in earnest
for the release of the hostages. Talks opened on September 14
in West Germany and continued for the next four months, with the
Algerians acting as intermediaries. The hostages were released
on January 20, 1981, concurrently with President Ronald Reagan's
taking the oath of office. The United States in return released
US$11 to US$12 billion in Iranian funds that had been frozen by
presidential order. Iran, however, agreed to repay US$5.1 billion
in syndicated and nonsyndicated loans owed to United States and
foreign banks and to place another US$1 billion in an escrow account,
pending the settlement of claims filed against Iran by United
States firms and citizens. These claims, and Iranian claims against
United States firms, were adjudicated by a special tribunal of
the International Court of Justice at The Hague, established under
the terms of the Algiers Agreement. As of 1987, the court was
still reviewing outstanding cases, of which there were several
thousand.
The hostage settlement served as a further bone of contention
between the Rajai government, which negotiated the terms, and
Bani Sadr. The president and the governor of the Central Bank
(Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran--established originally
in 1960 as Bank Markazi Iran), a presidential appointee, charged
the Iranian negotiators with accepting terms highly disadvantageous
to Iran.
One incentive to the settling of the hostage crisis had been
that in September 1980 Iran became engaged in full-scale hostilities
with Iraq. The conflict stemmed from Iraqi anxieties over possible
spillover effects of the Iranian Revolution. Iranian propagandists
were spreading the message of the Islamic Revolution throughout
the Gulf, and the Iraqis feared this propaganda would infect the
Shia Muslims who constituted a majority of Iraq's population.
The friction between Iran and Iraq led to border incidents, beginning
in April 1980. The Iraqi government feared the disturbed situation
in Iran would undo the 1975 Algiers Agreement concluded with the
shah (not to be confused with the 1980 United States-Iran negotiations).
There is also evidence the Iraqis hoped to bring about the overthrow
of the Khomeini regime and to establish a more moderate government
in Iran. On September 17, President Saddam Husayn of Iraq abrogated
the Algiers Agreement. Five days later Iraqi troops and aircraft
began a massive invasion of Iran (see The Iran-Iraq War , ch.
5).
The war did nothing to moderate the friction between Bani Sadr
and the Rajai government with its clerical and IRP backers. Bani
Sadr championed the cause of the army; his IRP rivals championed
the cause of the Pasdaran, for which they demanded heavy equipment
and favorable treatment. Bani Sadr accused the Rajai government
of hampering the war effort; the prime minister and his backers
accused the president of planning to use the army to seize power.
The prime minister also fought the president over the control
of foreign and domestic economic policy. In late October 1980,
in a private letter to Khomeini, Bani Sadr asked Khomeini to dismiss
the Rajai government and to give him, as president, wide powers
to run the country during the war emergency. He subsequently also
urged Khomeini to dissolve the Majlis, the Supreme Judicial Council,
and the Council of Guardians so that a new beginning could be
made in structuring the government. In November Bani Sadr charged
that torture was taking place in Iranian prisons and that individuals
were executed "as easily as one takes a drink of water." A commission
Khomeini appointed to investigate the torture charges, however,
claimed it found no evidence of mistreatment of prisoners.
There were others critical of the activities of the IRP, the
revolutionary courts and committees, and the club-wielding hezbollahis
who broke up meetings of opposition groups. In November and December,
a series of rallies critical of the government was organized by
Bani Sadr supporters in Mashhad, Esfahan, Tehran, and Gilan. In
December, merchants of the Tehran bazaar who were associated with
the National Front called for the resignation of the Rajai government.
In February 1981, Bazargan denounced the government at a mass
rally. A group of 133 writers, journalists, and academics issued
a letter protesting the suppression of basic freedoms. Senior
clerics questioned the legitimacy of the revolutionary courts,
widespread property confiscations, and the power exercised by
Khomeini as faqih. Even Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini,
initially spoke on the president's behalf. The IRP retaliated
by using its hezbollahi gangs to break up Bani Sadr rallies
in various cities and to harass opposition organizations. In November
it arrested Qotbzadeh, the former foreign minister, for an attack
on the IRP. Two weeks later, the offices of Bazargan's paper,
Mizan, were smashed.
Khomeini initially sought to mediate the differences between
Bani Sadr and the IRP to prevent action that would irreparably
weaken the president, the army, or the other institutions of the
state. He ordered the cancellation of a demonstration called for
December 19, 1980, to demand the dismissal of Bani Sadr as commander
in chief. In January 1981, he urged nonexperts to leave the conduct
of the war to the military. The next month he warned clerics in
the revolutionary organizations not to interfere in areas outside
their competence. On March 16, after meeting with and failing
to persuade Bani Sadr, Rajai, and clerical leaders to resolve
their differences, he issued a ten-point declaration confirming
the president in his post as commander in chief and banning further
speeches, newspaper articles, and remarks contributing to factionalism.
He established a three-man committee to resolve differences between
Bani Sadr and his critics and to ensure that both parties adhered
to Khomeini's guidelines. This arrangement soon broke down. Bani
Sadr, lacking other means, once again took his case to the public
in speeches and newspaper articles. The adherents of the IRP used
the revolutionary organizations, the courts, and the hezbollahi
gangs to undermine the president.
The three-man committee appointed by Khomeini returned a finding
against the president. In May, the Majlis passed measures to permit
the prime minister to appoint caretakers to ministries still lacking
a minister, to deprive the president of his veto power, and to
allow the prime minister rather than the president to appoint
the governor of the Central Bank. Within days the Central Bank
governor was replaced by a Rajai appointee.
By the end of May, Bani Sadr appeared also to be losing Khomeini's
support. On May 27, Khomeini denounced Bani Sadr, without mentioning
him by name, for placing himself above the law and ignoring the
dictates of the Majlis. On June 7, Mizan and Bani Sadr's
newspaper, Enqelab-e Eslami, were banned. Three days
later, Khomeini removed Bani Sadr from his post as the acting
commander in chief of the military. Meanwhile, gangs roamed the
streets calling for Bani Sadr's ouster and death and clashed with
Bani Sadr supporters. On June 10, participants in a Mojahedin
rally at Revolution Square in Tehran clashed with hezbollahis.
On June 12, a motion for the impeachment of the president was
presented by 120 deputies. On June 13 or 14, Bani Sadr, fearing
for his life, went into hiding. The speaker of the Majlis, after
initially blocking the motion, allowed it to go forward on June
17. The next day, the Mojahedin issued a call for "revolutionary
resistance in all its forms." The government treated this as a
call for rebellion and moved to confront the opposition on the
streets. Twenty-three protesters were executed on June 20 and
21, as the Majlis debated the motion for impeachment. In the debate,
several speakers denounced Bani Sadr; only five spoke in his favor.
On June 21, with 30 deputies absenting themselves from the house
or abstaining, the Majlis decided for impeachment on a vote of
177 to 1. The revolutionary movement had brought together a coalition
of clerics, middle-class liberals, and secular radicals against
the shah. The impeachment of Bani Sadr represented the triumph
of the clerical party over the other members of this coalition.
Data as of December 1987
|
